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I recently applied to the grad school at the University of Texas at San Antonio. UNT told me that, while we had a really good time through those four years, it’s ready to move on–to see other students. I said yea, it’s cool; whatever. I walked away smiling–cool, calm, collected. I then hid behind a tree and wept for roughly fifteen minutes.

UTSA seemed like a good idea. It was in a cool city and the school itself wasn’t so huge as to be intimidating or force me to ride a bike. Bikes make me look like a giant, mentally-deficient child.

I applied to the school recently, and decided to take a trip to San Antonio to see the city, meet the deans, some of the administration, and some of the students that will hopefully be my peers soon.

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San Antonio is a beautiful city. Celebrations of past glories weave seamlessly with hopeful promises of the new and the yet to come. Also woven in are homeless gentlemen speaking Spanish. I walk the downtown area wide-eyed, smiling widely. There are a lot of brown people here.

“There are a lot of brown people here,” I say to an older white male in a business suit. His tie is hideous. It’s at this moment that I remember that men aren’t the only people in the world–that women are people too! “There must be brown women in this town! My favorites!” I shriek. I begin to look around excitedly. There are sweet, sweet cinnamon girls all around me. I try to hug all of them at once, stretching my arms out wide, but it’s too much. I pass out and fall limply to the concrete.

I wake up without opening my eyes. I hear a faint beeping. There’s a sharp, throbbing pain emanating from the back of my skull. The air is cold. My arms, the only part of my body left exposed, are covered in goose bumps.

After a moment, a doctor comes in and sums up my accident. He tells me I’ve suffered a mild concussion. I tell him he’s concussed a mild suffer. He tells me it may be more than mild after all. I tell him that I have all the nurses in my mouth and that I’ll bite down on them if he doesn’t let me out. He tells me he can only let me out if a guardian signs me out, but that he seriously thinks I need more medical attention. That’s when Stephen “Dea ex machina” King comes in, signs my release papers, then leaves.

“Thanks, dad,” I say.

“Stop putting me in your blogs. I’m going to sue you,” he says from the hallway. He then pokes his head back in. “And I’m not your dad. I’m a stranger. Stranger.” Stephen King raises his hands like claws and opens his eyes wide, trying to scare an anesthesiologist in the hall way. She backs away nervously. Stephen pumps his fist, whispers “Still got it,” and walks away.

Stephen arranges for a shuttle to take me from the hospital to the UTSA English Department main office. I get there, look up at the building, put my hands on my hips and nod in approval. It’s a lovely, brick and glass building that seems to have been constructed somewhere within the last ten years. Its stonework seems to have no pattern at all–a kind of controlled chaos. Except you can’t ever control chaos, I think. I’ll show them what chaos really is. I begin to spin around wildly. I run to a group of students and knock all their books out of their hands. A young man on a skateboard tries to get around me on the sidewalk. I hurl my body into the air and crash into him. His skateboard is launched towards an oncoming vehicle. The vehicle tries to avoid the board and slams into a car parked on the side of the road. Apparently, the passenger in the car wasn’t wearing a seat belt and came, amongst the sound of shattering glass and scattered screaming, hurtling through the windshield.

“Uh oh,” I say, a nervous grimace stretching across my face. All over the English building’s lawn, people are picking up papers and books–nursing wounds. I exhale. “This is getting a little heavy.” I put my hands in my pockets, nod affably at the skateboarder, who still sits on the ground holding his shoulder, and begin to walk away. After two or three steps I hear someone call at me, and I break out into a sprint. Hearing the approach of police sirens, I end up hiding in a drainage ditch for a few hours.

Once the air is still, I get up and begin to walk to the nearest bus station. The left side of my body is covered in mud and the chill of the evening air is almost unbearable. I’m a little concerned that, being half covered in dirt and whatever else the city of San Antonio’s sewage system thought to throw on me, I would be a spectacle on the bus–unwelcome–but when I get up the stairs and see the rest of the passengers, I seem to fit in just fine. The cabin of the bus smells like the inside of a poop donut if you could sit inside a poop donut and then poop a lot and spill some cream cheese and leave it to settle for a while. You also wonder if the owner of the poop donut owns a cat because it smells a little like that too.

Soon enough, I reach the Alamo. By now, it’s sundown. The stars at night are big and bright.

There’s a gate in front of the Alamo, and a security guard.

“I’d like to see the Alamo, please,” I say. I look like an Animorph who’s halfway between his transformation between man and cow-pattie.

“Sorry, sir. Alamo’s closed.”

“Yea, so are my fists,” I respond. I raise both fists to show how tightly clinched they are.

He stares blankly at me. A child can be heard laughing in the distance. A gust of wind causes me to shudder a bit.

“Sir, are you threatening me?” the security guard asks.

“Maybe,” I say huskily. “Whattaya gonna do about it?” I raise my eyebrows and tilt my head slightly, challenging him.